Turkey

No, sirs

FOR the first time since President Turgut Ozal stood up to his country's powerful generals a decade ago, a Turkish leader is looking the army firmly in the eye. Ahmet Necdet Sezer, the obscure former judge who became the country's tenth president in May, has emerged as the best hope of saving its wobbling democracy from the sergeant-majorish attitude of the men in uniform. He did so by rejecting on August 8th a military-inspired decree aimed at civil servants accused of being either insufficiently secular or too sympathetic towards the Kurds.

The decree, issued last month by the prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, would have allowed the government to sack any bureaucrat deemed guilty of these offences, so long as two state inspectors confirmed they were indeed at fault. The accused, once sacked, could appeal in court. But, given the politicised nature of the Turkish judiciary, the chances of bringing that off were not great.

Quoting amply from the constitution, Mr Sezer, who was formerly chief of the Constitutional Court, said he was rejecting the decree because it defied the rule of law. It was, he explained, parliament's job to produce any measures needed to protect a united and secular Turkish state. Some 3,000 civil servants who have reportedly been blacklisted must have heaved a collective sigh of relief. A disgruntled Mr Ecevit, for his part, said he would “review the matter” with his mildly leftish party's coalition friends, the right-wing National Action Party and the centre-right Motherland. He will no doubt also watch keenly the generals' reaction.

The decree was part of the generals' continuing campaign against the Islamists they see as Turkey's most dangerous enemies. One recent victim of that campaign is Necmettin Erbakan, the country's first prime minister from an Islamic party, who had to step down three years ago amid vague accusations that he had sought to transform Turkey into a religious dictatorship during a turbulent year in office. He was banned from politics for five years and his party, Welfare, shut down. Already approaching his mid-70s, Mr Erbakan could end up behind bars now that an appeals court has upheld the prison sentence imposed on him last year for a speech—mild to most non-Turkish ears—he made in the largely Kurdish province of Bingol.

Will Mr Sezer's independent ideas lead the generals to launch an attack on him too? They are said to have been displeased by the president's earlier refusal to approve a list of university rectors proposed by the Board of Higher Education, a body set up by the army during its most recent coup, in 1980, to “depoliticise” (read purge) university campuses of left-wing academics and students. But the brass will have to be careful how it sets about tackling the president.

Mr Sezer and his wife, Semra, have begun to win the affection of many Turks by their discreet style, which has little of the pomp and ostentation of most of their predecessors. They have been spotted shopping at the local supermarket and queuing with ordinary citizens for health check-ups. Since taking up residence at the presidential “pink palace” in Ankara, the capital, they have sharply cut the size of the security and protocol staff.

The new president's earlier calls—made while he was still at the Constitutional Court—for lifting curbs on free expression, and on broadcasting and education in the Kurdish language, also made the generals frown, though they simultaneously brought nods of approval from Turkey's western friends. If the military bosses are sincere about wanting their country one day to become a full member of the European Union, they will have to learn how to accept the will of elected civilians, rather than always trying to get things the way they want them.